Ideas on a project that includes the use of actuators and sensors.

 

The list would be endless!
You need to start with what you mean by 'Actuator' .
What area of use do you have in mind?
Max.

 

Hello Max.
Thank you responding.
I am a new Engineering student and I was hoping to get a simple project idea that implements any type of actuator and sensor.
Thank you.

 

Years ago we did a project, actually a test, of a motor brush material. We used a linear actuator, leadscrew type, to move a brush over a material with a known micro finish to see how well the brush would wear. Each stroke was counted and a known distance. The test ran for several weeks as I recall. We also monitored the downward force of the brush. We used a few sensors, one on each end to reverse the motor. There was something like a 1.0 second pause each time the motor reversed.

Think about applications where you want to maybe test something as in the above example. The list of applications for linear actuators is, as mentioned, endless.

Ron

 

... A basic servo-mechanism concept could be a rotational pointing mechanism, such that a variable input voltage would cause a proportional rotation of a motor shaft, to which a laser pointer could be attached.
... It would be necessary to construct a proportional amplifier scheme, in order to drive a DC servo-motor, such that a given input voltage increment produced a corresponding change in the motor shaft angular alignment. A motor shaft angle position sensor could be either analog or digital. There are actually analog rotational potentiometers that consist of a smooth resistive surface and produce output voltage in proportion to a dynamic wiper position. Alternatively, the motor shaft position could be an optical position encoder of some sort. The optical encoder choice would be a little more practical to use, but would require a digital to analog conversion in order to interface with DC amplification required to operate the DC motor. A Position feedback control loop would produce the appropriate shaft position for each voltage input.
... The useful application of a working mechanism of this nature would be to replace the manual input voltage with an audio voltage source, which should provide an interesting video display.

 

As a takeoff on @ drc_567's pointer suggestion, there is a post "Converting bobble head owl to a random motion head." found in "Search Forums ".
Supply an digital address & pointer points to that point.
I would stay away from limit to limit,( Bang-Bang ) projects.